#SpaceBroncos

KTVB News has been giving some great coverage to the #SPACEBRONCOS – an interdisciplinary group of students at Boise State University that I am ‘co-professor of record’ for, alongside Barbara Morgan. Part of this project is to work directly and indirectly with NASA Astronaut Steve Swanson who recently was named Professor of the Practice by Boise State.

Steve Swanson is part of the three-member Soyuz TMA-12M crew, with Russian cosmonauts Alexander Skvortsov and Oleg Artemyev, that launched just minutes ago. This crew will join other Expedition 39 crew members Richard Mastracchio, Koichi Wakata and Mikhail Tyurin at the International Space Station later tonight.

We’ve been working on several education-based projects with NASA since last fall. Some of the things the students are working on include video scripts for Education Payload Opportunity Demonstrations (EPO Demos) that “Swanny” will record aboard the , Skype and Google Hangout conference sessions with Becky Kamas (our coordinator in the NASA Education Office), campus and community outreach, social media engagement, etc. All of these projects will culminate the morning of May 6 when the Space Broncos host a “Space Symposium” on campus. The event will include screenings of the EPO Demos that Steve will film and edit on the ISS, brief presentations (TED-style talks) on NASA partnerships and opportunities and the innovation that happens all over campus and the efforts we put into sustainability, and a 20-minute Q & A downlink with Steve Swanson, Richard Mastracchio and Koichi Wakata from the ISS.

This is a very fast-paced project! New information and opportunities are constantly coming from this collaboration. Stay tuned for updates!